{"id":5915,"date":"2016-02-02T15:36:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5915"},"modified":"2016-02-02T15:36:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:36:11","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-31-jan-6-feb-1944-helsinki-bombed-by-the-soviets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5915","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 31 Jan&#8211;6 Feb 1944: Helsinki bombed by the Soviets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_5914\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=5914\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5914\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5914\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5914\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/whelsinki2-300x140.jpg\" alt=\"Street scene in Helsinki after the bombing, 1944 [Public domain]\" width=\"300\" height=\"140\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/whelsinki2-300x140.jpg 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/whelsinki2-150x70.jpg 150w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/whelsinki2.jpg 666w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5914\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Street scene in Helsinki after the bombing, 1944 [Public domain]<\/p><\/div>This week in the war, on the night of 6 February 1944, the Soviet air force bombed Helsinki in an attempt to bring the Finns to the negotiating table and remove yet another of Germany&#8217;s allies. (Stalin had obtained British and American support for\u00a0a\u00a0bombing campaign\u00a0against Finland during the <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5839\">Tehran conference<\/a> in 1943.)<\/p>\n<p>Two more raids followed later in the month, but the raid on the 6th was the most destructive.<\/p>\n<p>The Finns had suffered air raids during the Winter War in 1939 and their air defenses, which included setting dummy fires in the countryside, were well worked out. Finnish planes (of British and German manufacture) sometimes followed the Soviet planes heading back after the raids and attacked their home bases in Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Finland did not make serious overtures for peace until August&#8212;by which time, Romania, too, was looking to end the fighting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week in the war, on the night of 6 February 1944, the Soviet air force bombed Helsinki in an attempt to bring the Finns to the negotiating table and remove yet another of Germany&#8217;s allies. (Stalin had obtained British &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5915\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[958,957],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-finland","tag-helsinki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5917,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions\/5917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}